Or would my mum have ditched Labour in the age of Jeremy Corbyn and his grotesque menagerie of unpatriotic, right-on Islington liberals?

I will never know.

Perhaps my mum would have stuck with Labour, even now.

But I am glad she did not live long enough to have her heart broken by the tragic decline of the party she supported for her entire adult life.

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Jeremy Corbyn and his menagerie of unpatriotic, right-on liberals have also alienated Labour's core baseCredit: EPA

I am glad she never saw Diane Abbott change the subject to Labour’s comfort blanket of the NHS every time someone mentions immigration.

I am glad my mum never saw the dreamy look John McDonnell gets in his eyes when he speaks of the IRA.

I am glad my mum never saw the Labour leader describe terrorists as his friends.

I am glad she never saw Emily Thornberry sneer at our nation’s flag.

And I am glad that my Labour-voting mum never saw the party she supported come to despise ordinary men and women and care nothing for their concerns and aspirations.

For history will record that the British working class did not abandon the Labour Party.
Labour abandoned them.

Trump risks losing voters

EVEN before he gets anywhere near the Oval Office, Donald Trump has reneged on his promise to prosecute Hillary Clinton.

I wonder how many more of his mouthy campaign promises will be broken.
I wonder if the Great Wall of Mexico will ever be built. And I wonder how his excitable supporters will feel about it. After Trump’s victory, a number of idiots on the Left like
Guardian journalist Monisha Rajesh seriously called for his assassination.
But if I was Donald, I would be far more worried about my own disappointed supporters.
YOU could argue that the greatest talents of the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties have all passed away over the last 12 months – Leonard Cohen at the age of 82, David
Bowie at 69 and Prince at 57. As we enter December, I find myself constantly playing You Want It Darker, easily the best thing I heard this year – Leonard Cohen’s beautiful, bittersweet goodbye.
It feels right that a dying man in his eighties made the album of the year.
2016 has been the year the music died.

For the love of Boris ...

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It's impossible to say where Boris stands on freedom of movementCredit: Getty Images

It would hardly be the first time that Boris has told an audience not necessarily what he believes but what he believes they want to hear.

One glaring example – during the referendum Boris made the prospect of Turkey joining the EU sound like a very bad thing indeed.

But when our new Foreign Secretary visited the country in September, he promised Britain would “help Turkey in any way” to join the EU.

At best, this is mealy-mouthed hypocrisy.

And at worst, it is telling someone big fat fibs.

Despite the accusation that is regularly flung at his lovable mop-top, Boris’s problem is not that he has a vaunting ambition.

His big problem is that he desperately wants to be loved.

R.I.P Manuel

HOW sad that the final years of Andrew Sachs, who has died at the age of 86, were tarnished by the scandal caused by Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand and their puerile bullying of an elderly man.

And how fitting that the world will remember the comic genius of Sachs, above with John Cleese, and be laughing at the exploits of Fawlty Towers’ Manuel long after it has forgotten all about Brand and Ross.

Park Life is hardly typical

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Sarah Olney's win holds little significance for the rest of the countryCredit: Reuters

And if the result means anything, it is surely that any sitting MP whose views on the EU radically differ to those of his constituents is up for the chop, no matter the size of his or her majority.

Goldsmith is a Euro- sceptic.

But Richmond Park is pro-EU.

In many Labour constituencies across our land, it’s the other way round.

Plenty of sitting Labour MPs will be trembling with fear today.

Congratulations are due to candidate Sarah Olney, above, and to the Lib Dems.

Richmond Park does not give them a mandate to thwart the democratic will of 17.4million British people.

But now they have nine MPs, it definitely means they are going to need a bigger minicab.

Nativity farce

THE headmistress at St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School in Worcester has walked into a winter wonderland of controversy by asking parents to pay £1 per ticket to watch the school’s nativity play this Christmas.

Headmistress Louise Bury is attempting to raise money to buy books for the 40 per cent of children at St Joseph’s who speak English as a second language.
This is a noble cause but a quid to watch a nativity play still seems a bit on the steep side.
£1 to watch five-year-old wise men in cotton-wool beards struggling to remember their lines, pint-sized shepherds in bed sheets picking their noses and a one-eyed doll standing in for the baby Jesus?
I have sat through a few nativity plays in my time and I always felt that, all things considered, the school should be paying the parents to watch this stuff.

Freedom to panic, Europe

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Italian PM Matteo Renzi is facing the end of his officeCredit: Getty Images

Either result, Renzi losing, Hofer winning, would be catastrophic for Brussels.

And in the first half of 2017 there are elections in Holland and France that could result in referendums on EU membership.

Even two out of five Germans say they want a referendum on EU membership.

Two out of five Germans!

So why are we so timid about leaving?

Why do many of us suspect that this Government is bottling out of Brexit?

We’d better get a move on with leaving.

Because soon there will be nothing left to leave.

Petty pugilists

IT all kicked off at the press conference for the David Haye v Tony Bellew fight.

Passions ran high as insults were traded, punches were thrown and Haye denounced Bellew as a “bell end” on live TV. But all the ruckus only revealed boxing’s central problem – these days the actual fights are never as exciting as the press conferences.